Thursday, April 30, 2009

The coke jet mystery leads to a biotech mystery...

(Note: This is not a "summarize Hopsicker" post, although it begins as one. I've published a few articles like that in the past, and am proud to have done so. But this article provides some original research into strange and important areas that Hopsicker has not yet addressed. The new stuff has to do with a very odd biotech firm.)

(By the way -- where else will you find a conspiracy theory involving a member of the Osmond family and the blood of a goat?)

I have not yet made proper note of this important story by Daniel Hopsicker. A high-level ponzi schemer named Art Nadel -- who, though not a Madoff-level operator, got up to his fair share of shennanigans -- had a partner named Louis D. Paolino. Louie's an interesting guy.

1. Louie, Louie...

Previously, Louie was best known for garbage. See here to learn about his infamous "garbage barge," which some of you may recall as the butt of many a joke back in the late 1980s. Paolino also makes Mace. Literally. [Correction: He ran the Mace company until recently.]

Hopsicker seems to have found a link between Paolino and the infamous 5.5 ton "coke jet" that has been the focus of so much attention on his site and (to a lesser degree) on this one.

The man who owned the barge was Louis D. Paolino. He received funding from Argyll Equities LLC, which also invested in the Kovar Crime family of business fraudsters at St. Petersburg FL's SkyWay Aircraft, owners of a DC9 they kept at the Clearwater-St. Pete Airport which would be busted carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine.

"The cursed cargo of the Khian Sea," as it became known, was so toxic that even New Jersey refused to accept it.

Several years ago Louis Paolino became the grateful recipient of a $6 million loan from a mysterious private equity firm called Argyll Equities LLC, in Boerne, TX, and La Jolla, CA.

It was one of only three loans the secretive company is known to have made. Another was infamous SkyWay Aircraft.

SkyWay Aircraft was a complete fraud which existed primarily to facilitate a pump & dump stock play. SkyWay had no product, no market, and no prospects.

I'm wondering why Lou borrowed money from Argyll. After all, he sold his garbage biz for a cool billion, and he makes Mace. As we shall see, it might have made more sense for Argyll to borrow from him...

2. About that coke jet...

The Kovars used SkyWay as a means to bilk investors (the company did not have a working product) and as an excuse for buying that DC9 jet which was eventually found on a Mexican tarmac with 5.5 tons of white stuff inside.

That jet had an astonishing history. It was once owned by the partner of Stephen Adams, who personally spent a million bucks on billboard ads for George W. Bush in 2000. As coincidence would have it, Adams had also once owned the Gulfstream II which figured in an even more mysterious "coke jet" incident. Michael Farkas, the afore-mentioned Adams partner, founded SkyWay -- whose illustrious DC9 spent a lot of time in a hangar owned by Bush campaign funder Richard Rainwater.

Argyll Equities' only funded three deals. Their third plunge into the world of investment banking-- after SkyWay Aircraft and Louis Paulino--was arranging a $17 million loan for a Mexican businessman, who then provided "significant capital," according to Chilean news accounts, to “Chilean narcotics trafficker Manuel Vicente Losada."

This news came out after Losada was arrested in the Chilean capital of Santiago. He had been “linked to a shipment of five tons of cocaine which U.S. drug enforcement officials in Miami intercepted over six years ago on the MV Harbour as it headed toward Guantanamo Bay.”

(The italics are ours. We were stunned.)

Why were Caribbean dopers steering a course for a highly-secure U.S. military facility?

To be specific, a Mexican industrialist named Serrano acted as the middleman between Argyll and Losada. But money is, as you know, fungible. (I think Hopsicker is wrong when he speaks of only three deals.)

Stories of this sort have led some people to suspect that companies like SkyWay offer a way for those within the American political and business elites to disguise their involvement with the drug trade. Some people so suspect. I, of course, would never say such a thing. That's tin foil stuff.

At any rate, Paolino is now suing Nadel's hedge fund. Lou says he was ripped off. He's also suing Argyll.

3. Let's look at Argyll...

Argyll is an interesting company. It is run by one Doug McClain, who, in 2008, was all of 33 years old. How does a kid get to hold such a position?

He also runs -- and here's where we get into very strange territory -- something called Argyll BioTech, as well as a firm called Immunosyn. The two firms are run out of the same office.

Wow. That's quite an impressive list of businesses for a lad of his tender years.

His partner is one James T. Miceli. You'd think that the bright young fellows capable of doing this kind of business would have figured out that SkyWay was a scam. Well, live and learn.

Argyll BioTech's relationship with Immunosyn is not clear to me. The companies are (as noted above) run out of the same office and seem to be forever trading stock with each other -- yet we are supposed to think of them as separate enterprises.

Argyll, or Immunosyn, or both, have the honor of distributing SF-1019, which, they claim, is very useful in treating MS. The FDA has yet to approve the drug. (You can also find, if you scour the web, occasional mention of the drug's potential efficacy in treating AIDS and various forms of diabetes.)

When I read about that drug, I wondered: How did young McClain acquire those distribution rights...?

My attempt to suss out an answer via Google hurled me into a strange world previously unknown to me.

4. Paging Jed Bartlett! (Maybe he can figure this out...)

A little web-searching reveals that some (claimed) MS sufferers have had some very positive things to say about SF-1019, although the treatment -- if the drug is approved -- will be expensive: $300 a shot. Yet the MS community also has questions:

I read back and found some things on SF1019. I found a lot of negative. As I read I understood that for the most part people who were commenting were frustrated because of lack of info. I have found that lack of knowledge regarding drug development and how the process works can be confusing and also make persons who are desperate for a cure find fault and look for the scams...

I agree that we need more transparency regarding drug development -- and a lack of transparency may explain why some MS sufferers view Argyll warily.

One reason for wariness: Immunosyn exec Stephen Ferrone says that SF-1019 has been in development for ten years. Who did the developing? Argyll BioTech went into business in 2006, and Immunosyn is (as far as I can tell) roughly the same age.

A number of people within the MS universe suspect that SF-1019 is a scam, or a "money making exercise." Go here and then follow the links, if you feel up to the task. And then you'll want to visit this blog, which is devoted to Immunosyn.

Although the author of that blog does not appear to know about the Argyll Equities connection to Skyway and other unusual entities, the anonymous writer seems more than a little suspicious.

1. The Principals of Argyll Biotechologies and Immunosyn are Being Sued, and are Being Accused of Participating in a Fraudulent Stock Loans Scheme. (In fairness, it is important to stress that being accused of something does not mean you are guilty, however the suit is certainly relevant to Immunosyn)

James Miceli, who is the CEO of Argyll Biotechnologies and Douglas McClain, who is the President of Argyll Biotechnologies and also the CFO of Immunosyn are being sued for $4,000,000 in a lawsuit that is alleging seven separate counts, including fraud, RICO, and RICO conspiracy...

Before these two principals got into “biotechnologies”, they were (and still are) players in a niche market called “stock lending” using a company called Argyll Equities, LLC. They loaned money to people who put up publicly traded securities as collateral, and this is not the first time they have been sued for fraud relating to securities collateralized loans.

Argyll, or the Argylls, get sued a lot, and not just by Mr. Paolino. (Remember good old Louie, the garbage guy? We started with him.) One of those suits derives from a previous $4.5 million judgment against Argyll Equities back in 2005. The folks who won that suit have not been paid, and they want to know why little Doug has spent so much money on his various enterprises but not on his court-mandated obligation.

The lawsuit also alledges that McClain and his associates purposely tried to move and hide funds by transferring funds and assets to Miceli’s wife and and other companies as well, both in direct violation of the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act.

The afore-linked site also calls into question the SF-1019 drug trials in Malaysia and Utah. Argyll -- or is it Immunosyn? -- says that it (they?) conducted trials of SF-1019 in the tiny town of Beaver, Utah.

Says who? If you search the U.S. FDA website (www.fda.gov) there is not a single mention of SF-1019, Immunosyn or Argyll Biotechnologies. And why Beaver, Utah? It seems odd that a miracle drug would be administered in the US by a family practice doctor in a town with a population of 3,000 people, located in almost the middle of nowhere.

How many MS sufferers can there be in Beaver?

Alan Osmond, brother to the beauteous Marie, is an MS patient whose professional-looking website extolls the benefits of SF-1019. He does not disclose that he has received four million shares of Immunosyn. Although he boasts of his prodigious SF-1019 intake (he just loves the stuff), he does not disclose the circumstances under which he was legally administered a drug not yet approved by the FDA.

Alan Osmond is now saying on his site: "Immunosyn was hit hard with these past financial times. But, I am going to test soon, a new batch that is about 20% stronger! Yes, they are still pushing forward to get it out and help us!” Testing a new batch??? 20% stronger??? Can anyone please explain how it is that Mr. Osmond is getting access to a drug that to date has no history of any type of FDA approvals, not to mention a drug that is 20% stronger??? Should someone start speaking with him about this??

By the way, Alan has an odd habit of referring to the drug as "Immunosyn," as though that were the name of the product and not the company. The main ingredient is goat's blood. I'm not kidding.

As I scan the pro-SB-1019 sites and the anti-SB-1019 sites, I get the queasy feeling that one side or the other is astro-turfing.

Attitudes are being rigged within the MS community. Either there is a conspiracy against Argyll/Immunosyn, or Argyll/Immunosyn may itself be involved in shady practices. You may judge for yourself which scenario seems to be more likely.

As far as I know, SF-1019 works. I mean, the Argyll website features some very nice stock photos of scientists and beakers and scientists doing scientific things with beakers, and it's all very impressive. No reason for cynicism there.

Still, if you had MS, would you want to fill your arm with a drug made by a brand new-ish company run by a fetus in a business suit?

Now let's say that you're an investor. Would you want to toss money at a drug company (or brotherhood of companies) that has been sued many, many times in its young life, and which has done business with some rather shadowy figures? Would your investment decision be swayed by Argyll's association with the notorious Kovars, who ran a fake company with a fake product which was pushed by fake testimonials on fake websites?

Just asking.

(I have slightly expanded this post since its publication last night.)

Bleed some goats. Spin out the blood cells. Put it through a filter. Dry it down.Viola. SF-1019.

---------------

P.S. [unrelated to the above]How is Bella doing?

posted by G : 1:48 AM

Bella, alas, is not doing well. She enjoyed the painkiller drugs (we couldn't help but laugh when she spent about 20 minutes standing in the middle of the room, staring off into infinity) but now she's in pain again. I can't stand this.

Sure am glad I did not reproduce. I can just imagine how crazy I'd be going if she were a child.

By the way - all the claims of efficacy that I've listed are directly from the company or its "lead scientist".

posted by G : 12:57 PM

It's Aimspro and it's been stolen and taken to the dark side !!

see

http://www.proventus.org.uk/page205aa.html

this will fill in the missing blanks watch the "David Shotton" interview.

It make's for great viewing !!

posted by Anonymous : 1:27 PM

http://www.secinfo.com/dsvr4.u21.htm

Alan Osmond is listed as an advisor and stock holder who sells his 4m shares and zeroes out.

British Virgin Island entities, even one advisor who is "a former intelligence officer," and publicly traded companies... nothing to see here.

posted by Anonymous : 3:28 PM

Why Beaver? Maybe it's because the onetime pres and CEO D. Kent Norton was also the managing director of The Sutherland Institute, a Utah-based think tank. Just a hunch.

posted by Anonymous : 3:39 PM

Good article Joe, Hopsicker has also done a good job too.

The family I was married into talked about so many different things that it was difficult to keep track of what was what. Remember that Clyde O'Connor is my ex=sister-in-law's brother and her husband, Bruce Adreani is my ex-wife's brother and Clyde's business partner.

All I'm going to add at this time is that you haven't seen anything yet. What is surfacing is unbelievable but wait as more comes out, you'll have an even more difficult time believing it. The family laundered drug money in to property for this criminal system. The drug shipments were weekly $100 million dollar cocaine shipments. They have links with the largest mid-west Cocaine drug lord who lives up in McHenry IL. He is known as Louis Cichon and once was involved in owning jets to fly the drugs in as well. There are other huge Drug Lords too as surfacing this is only the beginning.

Aside from the drug system is a huge army of people who's job is to protect many aspects of the system. Remember that no one makes any money until someone pays money for the drugs. Who's involved here also will surprise you. By the way I personally met some of the people at Chicago Radio and they aren't what they profess to be. There are many stringers trying to limit this from surfacing.

I'll add more another time.

Marty DidierNorthbrook, IL

posted by Anonymous : 6:02 PM

where else will you find a conspiracy theory involving a member of the Osmond family and the blood of a goat?That should be the subheader on this blog.

McClain and his cohorts have a background in stock loan fraud, if I recall correctly.

I think getting too interested in what Immunosyn does and doesn't do isn't worthwhile. Biotech companies have often been used for various securities fraud schemes. Hemispherx Biopharma is a good example. Check out the history of that company and a drug called Ampligen.

Interestingly enough, there are some connections between Hemispherx and Paolino. But I digress.

Paolino has owned and managed many other companies besides MACE. Why is it that MACE gets all of the attention? One would think that US Plastic Lumber might get some attention as well.Why exactly was USPL in a harbor dredging business, anyway? Was someone interested in making certain harbors deeper and thus more easily navigable? If so, why?

And then, Eastern Environmental should not be ignored. That company used all sorts of accounting gimmicks to pump up its value, so that it could eventually be sold to Waste Management for $1.1 billion. One problem was that the merger was perceived to be anti-competitive, so Waste Management agreed to sell certain dumps, transfer stations and other assets to Allied Waste. One has to wonder whether this was all just a more sophisticated version of the old property rights system that folks in NY, NJ and PA don't need to have explained.

Eastern Environmental had another problem, too. That would be the NYC Trade Waste Commission, whose ostensible purpose was to rid the city of the mobbed-up carting industry. Or did the Commission only make it more palatable by corporatizing it? Wall Street certainly profited from the enormous roll-up of the industry.

But then again the Trade Waste Commission probably had some good souls who were concerned that Paolino's father was involved with dumping toxic waste from Philadelphia in Haiti. (Most of it was dumped at sea, but that's another story.) So their approval of the Waste Management purchase of Eastern Environmental was made contingent upon clean-up of the Haiti beaches by one Louis Paolino and Eastern Environmental. Where exactly did all of that toxic waste eventually end up? Will we ever know?

But then we need to get back to Paolino and USPL. One of USPL's significant investors was Michael Lauer's Lancer hedge fund group. Interestingly enough, Lauer was also a significant investor in Hemispherx Biopharma. But more importantly, Lauer was also a significant investor in Titan Corp. Strange intersections, eh?

Lauer, if you believe the press reports, was originally from Ukraine, but immigrated to the US and started out as a cabbie in NYC. From there, he became a star analyst at Kidder Peabody. His specialty? The defense industry, of course.

From there, he started his own hedge fund business. His investment philosophy was supposedly to find undervalued small-cap companies that had large growth potential. Of course, it isn't hard to demonstrate growth when you invest in companies where valuations are falsified, accounting fraud is pervasive, and trading is manipulated.

At any rate, an intrepid journalist from the NY Post eventually got wind of what Lauer was doing, and started writing some very unpleasant articles. It was discovered that Lauer was involved with several stock fraudsters who have long established ties to organized crime of the LCN variety.Guess what happened to the reporter? He was fired by his neocon newspaper.

Lauer was indicted (perhaps for only a fraction of his real crimes) in 2008, and he was scheduled to go on trial in April 2009. But now it's May, and what do you hear from the press? NADA.

Why is that?

- a previous poster

posted by Anonymous : 8:43 PM

According to this,SF1019 is just Gary Davis's failed AIDS cure, BB:7075, the rights to which were purchased by Doug McClain, Sr.

posted by Mazoola : 5:37 AM

While I'm at it, I also found it interesting that one of Immunosyn's early investors (and beneficial seller during the company's IPO) was one Joseph Salvani, a man with a long, ticklish career shilling for questionable stocks, according to Forbes and the SEC.

posted by Mazoola : 6:15 AM

I need to make a correction to my previous comment:

When Eastern Environmental applied for a permit to haul trash in NYC in 1997, the NYC Trade Waste Commission required them to remove the ash from Haiti. Eastern was given until sometime in 1998 to remove the ash. Somewhere around that same time, Waste Management made the offer to purchase Eastern Environmental.

Incidentally, Joseph Paolino and Sons also had problems with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, due to the handling of certain kinds of radioactive waste without a license.

FYI, Doug McClain SR and JR have both been arrested for fraud in 2012, as has partner Jim Miceli. JR and Miceli were arrested by the feds for a massive stock loan fraud scheme. SR was arrested in San Antonio TX for two first-degree felonies (same crime class as murder) for stealing the life savings of a 72-year-old, crippled, retired physician. Justice is slow but sure!

posted by victim too : 2:57 PM

On January 28th 2013 James T Miceli committed suicide at his home in Poway. I have to wonder why with all the evidence he was not in jail and forced to face the charges. He was a wolf in sheeps clothing. In the end nothing more than a crook and a coward. I feel sadness for his young children who were among his many victims.

posted by Anonymous : 5:35 AM

This sr guy has been a piece of shit his whole life. He has been a scam / con man for many years . Question was his wife involed

posted by Anonymous : 9:26 AM

Argyll also agreed to make a loan to SIKO Ventures, secured by stock in a Hong Kong corporation, but sold the securities without ever making the loan. Argyll was sued in Hong Kong, and the judgment was enforced in Texas. It was referenced in Paolino's lawsuit: "Plaintiff alleges that “Defendants Argyll, McClain, Miceli and Spanier” defrauded anotherborrower in a similar manner in 2003. (Id.¶ 30-31.) (Argyll, McClain, Miceli and Spanier are notin fact named as Defendants in this case.) He cites a judgment entered by a court in Hong Kongin favor of Siko Venture Limited on July 30, 2004, where, as in this case, Spanier acted as brokerfor a collateralized loan, and Argyll unlawfully sold shares tendered as collateral for a loan, almostimmediately after that loan had been negotiated."